Ethan was woken by a loud claxon, the sound tearing through the Habitation Zone without warning. It wasn’t just noise—it was designed to pull people upright, to drag them out of sleep whether they wanted to wake or not.

He flinched as it hit him, his eyes snapping open before his thoughts could catch up. For a moment, he didn’t move, just lay there blinking into the dim light, trying to place where he was.

Then he turned his head.

The room came back first. The bed. The walls. The faint, unfamiliar smell of the place. And then the weight beside him.

Alice.

The memory followed right behind it, hitting harder than the noise had. The closeness, the awkwardness of it, the way neither of them had quite known what they were doing but hadn’t stopped anyway. It rushed back all at once, uninvited and impossible to ignore.

Heat climbed into his face before he could stop it.

He groaned softly, dragging a hand over his eyes as he pushed himself upright, careful—almost instinctively so—not to disturb her. The movement felt heavier than it should have, like his body was still catching up to everything that had changed overnight.

Six in the morning.

Too early.

Too loud.

Too… normal, for a place like this.

He let out a slow breath, glancing back at her again, unsure what he was supposed to do now. Nothing about this had come with instructions, and for the first time since arriving, that uncertainty felt sharper than anything the system had done to him.

Alice stirred a moment later, the claxon finally registering. She didn’t fight it, didn’t cling to sleep the way he did. Her body responded easily, like this was just another part of the day, something expected rather than endured.

“Morning,” she said, leaning in to press a quick kiss to his cheek.

Then she was already moving.

There was no pause, no lingering acknowledgment of what had happened between them the night before. She slipped out of bed with the same casual ease she carried everywhere else, as if nothing had changed, as if this was just another morning like any other.

“I have morning duties,” she said flatly, stretching slightly before turning toward the door. “I’ll be done around noon. Gotta clean the slaughter chambers before Processing starts.”

Ethan looked at her, still heavy with sleep, the words taking a moment longer to settle than they should have. The contrast hit him harder than the claxon had. She said it so simply. No weight, no hesitation. Just part of the routine.

She caught the look and giggled.

“You can go back to sleep,” she added, softer now. “They only wake us up so we don’t miss breakfast.”

“Okay,” Ethan muttered, already sinking back into the mattress, his body giving in the moment it was allowed to. “I’ll eat later.”

He didn’t remember falling back asleep.

He slept a few more hours before finally dragging himself up. By the time he made it back to the dining hall, breakfast was mostly over, the buffet picked clean in places and left to cool in others. What remained was cold, but still edible—good enough that he didn’t bother hesitating.

He didn’t sit.

He leaned over the edge of a table instead, eating quickly, more focused on getting it done than enjoying it. There was no sense in lingering. Not here. Not like this.

Like yesterday, the attention hadn’t faded.

If anything, it had settled into something more consistent. Less curious, more assured. Hands still found him in passing, touches brushing over him with that same quiet entitlement, as if his presence there invited it, justified it. The novelty of a Citizen standing among them, exposed in the same way, hadn’t worn off.

Ethan kept his hands to himself.

He didn’t return it, didn’t encourage it, but he didn’t pull away either. The flinching was gone now, replaced by something steadier, something quieter. His body still registered it, still felt every contact, but the reaction had dulled, smoothed down into something he could ignore if he chose to.

Once he was fully awake, he left the hall and set about trying to amuse himself.

It was background noise now.

Not gone. Not absent. Just… easier to live with.

He spent the next hour drifting through the Habitation Zone, moving without much direction, letting the place unfold around him. The upper levels felt familiar now—open spaces, shared rooms, people moving through them with an ease that made it all seem almost ordinary.

It was only when he found the stairwell leading down that the feeling shifted.

The basement was quieter.

Not empty, but muted. The air felt heavier, the walls closer, the light harsher in a way that made everything look flatter than it should have. The cells here hadn’t been opened up the same way as the rest of the facility. They still held their original shape, narrow and enclosed, the kind of space that wasn’t meant to be lived in for long.

Overflow, he realised.

Or something worse.

He stepped into one of the open cells, pausing just inside the threshold. Even with the additions—bedding, small attempts at comfort—it didn’t hide what the space had been built for. The walls pressed in too close, the ceiling low enough to feel it without touching it, the air still in a way that made it hard to breathe properly.

This had been solitary.

He didn’t need anyone to tell him that.

Ethan stood there for a moment longer, letting the silence settle around him, trying to picture what a night would feel like down here. Not just lying in the bed, but staying. Being left in it. The door closed, the sound of everything else cut off, nothing but the walls and whatever thoughts you brought in with you.

He couldn’t imagine sleeping.

Not properly. Not comfortably.

Not in a place like this.

He didn’t stay long.

The moment he stepped back into the stairwell, the air felt different again, lighter somehow, easier to breathe. By the time he reached the upper levels, the tension in his chest had already started to ease, his body settling without him needing to think about it.

He hadn’t realised how much it had gotten to him until he was out.

He moved on without looking back.

Eventually, he came across an open door set slightly apart from the others. It didn’t lead into another shared space, or a room filled with people, but into a corridor lined with white tiles, the kind that reflected too much light and made everything feel sharper than it should.

He slowed as he approached it.

It looked familiar.

Not exactly the same, but close enough that his body reacted before his mind could place it. The clean lines. The brightness. The absence of anything soft. It carried the same clinical stillness he had already passed through once before.

Intake.

The memory came back with it, sudden and unwelcome. Not the fear of it, not anymore, but the feeling. The hands, efficient and impersonal, moving him without hesitation, touching every part of him with the same detached precision. The way he had stood there and let it happen, not because he wanted to, but because there hadn’t been a reason not to.

His body remembered that part more clearly than anything else.

He stood in the doorway for a moment, not quite stepping inside, not quite turning away either. The corridor stretched ahead of him in a straight, uninterrupted line, quiet in a way that didn’t feel empty, just… waiting.

If this wasn’t Intake, then what was it?

There were no signs. No markings. Nothing to suggest it was anything more than another corridor branching off from the rest of the facility. Just white tile, clean lines, and that same quiet, clinical stillness stretching out ahead of him.

It didn’t look restricted.

That was the problem.

There was nothing to stop him, nothing to warn him off, nothing to suggest that stepping through would mean crossing into something he wasn’t meant to see. The door had been left open, like any other, as if it belonged to the same space as everything else.

As if it was safe.

He lingered in the doorway for a moment longer, the thought hovering just out of reach, something instinctive that hadn’t quite formed into words yet. A hesitation without a reason, a pull to turn back that didn’t come from anything he could point to.

If only he’d understood it.

If only he’d realised that some doors weren’t meant to be open at all—at least, not for someone like him.

He stepped inside, the change immediate.

It wasn’t the same lightness as the main Habitation floors, where everything felt open and shared, nor the suffocating weight of the basement cells that still carried the memory of what they had been built for. This was something else entirely.

The air felt… settled.

Not stagnant, not oppressive, just lived in. Like people stayed here longer than they were meant to elsewhere. There was a quiet permanence to it, something that didn’t belong to the transient rhythm of Habitation, where people came and went, always moving toward an end.

Here, it didn’t feel like anything was ending.

It felt like it continued.

Ethan moved further down the corridor, slower now, more aware of where he was placing his feet. The space wasn’t empty, not really. There were signs of use everywhere, subtle but unmistakable. Doors that looked handled more often than the others, surfaces that had lost the sterile edge of untouched space, the faint impression that this part of the facility wasn’t just passed through.

It was occupied.

And not by people waiting.

By people who belonged.

As he turned the corner, he walked straight into someone.

The impact knocked the breath from him, sending him stumbling backward before he lost his footing entirely and hit the floor hard. The jolt ran up through him, sharp enough to sting.

“Ow,” he said reflexively, the word slipping out before he could stop it.

He looked up.

It was a woman.

Naked, like him—but the similarity ended there. Her body was lean and defined without being overtly muscular, every line controlled rather than displayed. Around her waist sat a simple belt, utilitarian in design, its purpose unmistakable. Knives rested in the slots, arranged with care, not for show, but for use.

Her hair caught his attention next.

Silver.

Not the dull grey of age, but something sharper, cleaner. It didn’t match the rest of her, didn’t suggest weakness or time. If anything, it made her harder to place, like she existed slightly outside of what he expected.

Then her eyes found him.

Grey, the same shade, but colder. Focused in a way that didn’t just look at him, but through him, as if whatever she was assessing had already begun before he’d even realised he was being judged.

She didn’t move to help him up.

Didn’t react at all, beyond the slight tilt of her head.

“Interesting,” she said, her voice flat, controlled, carrying just enough weight to make the word feel deliberate.

Then she offered him a hand.

Ethan hesitated, the pause brief but noticeable, before reaching up and taking it. Her grip closed around his and she pulled him to his feet with effortless strength, like his weight barely registered.

Before he could steady himself, her other hand moved.

Two fingers caught the edge of his ID tag, lifting it where it pierced through his nipple. The motion was small, almost casual, but it sent a sharp sting through him, enough to make him flinch. The skin there was still tender, still not used to being handled.

She watched the reaction.

Not with concern. Just… noting it.

“You’re trespassing, Citizen,” she said bluntly. “Do you understand what that usually means?” she asked.

He shook his head. The answer came automatically, his voice catching somewhere behind his teeth as the instinct to speak collided with the sudden awareness of who—what—he was standing in front of.

“This area is for Butcher use only,” she continued, releasing the tag and letting it fall back against his chest. “Where we are housed.”

We?

The word settled in his mind a second too late, the implication following close behind it.

“You’re a Butcher?” he asked, the question quieter than he intended.

She nodded once.

“But the door doesn’t work,” she said, almost idly, as if the detail barely mattered. “It’s been left open since last night.”

Her gaze stayed on him, unblinking.

“So curious little rabbits like yourself were bound to wander in eventually,” she added, the faintest trace of something dry beneath the words, not quite amusement, not quite disdain. “Drawn to whatever you’re not supposed to see.”

“But you came too far from your burrow, little rabbit,” she said, her tone even, almost conversational, as if she were stating something already decided. “And that leaves me to play the fox.”

Ethan took a step back, then another, the movement instinctive as the words settled over him. The space between them didn’t feel like enough, not with the way she was looking at him, not with the way she’d framed it. His chest tightened, breath catching as fear finally pushed through everything else.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, the words tumbling out before he could steady them. “I didn’t know. I’m just a visitor—a Citizen, like you said.”

She didn’t move.

Didn’t follow him. Didn’t close the distance.

She just watched.

“Relax,” she said at last, her tone unchanged, as if his fear hadn’t altered anything. “I’m not going to slaughter you for this.”

The reassurance didn’t feel like one.

“It’s a fault in procedure,” she continued, almost mildly now. “The door should have been secured. There should have been something in place to deter rabbits from wandering where they don’t belong.”

Her gaze remained fixed on him, steady and assessing.

“You walked through an open space,” she added. “That’s not a crime.”

“But there must be consequences,” she said, the words delivered with quiet certainty, as if they weren’t a threat, just a fact.

She turned before he could respond, stepping past him and heading back toward Habitation without waiting to see if he would follow.

“Come along, little rabbit.”

This time, he didn’t hesitate.

Just because he wasn’t going to die now didn’t mean he couldn’t still get it wrong in some other way, some rule he didn’t know existed until he’d already broken it. That thought settled in quickly, pushing aside anything else. He fell into step behind her without question, matching her pace as best he could.

They moved back through Habitation together.

The reaction was immediate.

People noticed her first. They always did. Conversations faltered, movement slowed, bodies shifting instinctively to give her space. The casual closeness that defined the rest of the zone fractured around her presence, replaced by something tighter, more controlled.

Then they noticed him.

The looks changed.

No one greeted her. No one spoke. Whatever place Butchers had here, it wasn’t social.

Some stared openly, confusion flickering across their faces as they tried to place what they were seeing. Others pulled back slightly, not from him, but from the pairing of them, the wrongness of it settling in faster than understanding. A Citizen walking beside a Butcher, not being handled, not being moved along, but following.

Like prey choosing to walk beside the predator.

Like a fox moving through a coop that had gone suddenly, instinctively still.

Ethan felt it all, every glance, every shift in posture, but he kept moving. He didn’t look away, didn’t try to shrink from it. If anything, the attention only reinforced what he already understood.

He was out of place here.

And she wasn’t.

They didn’t linger. Didn’t stop.

The flow of Habitation closed behind them as she led him to a set of sealed doors, heavier than the others, built with purpose rather than convenience. A panel sat beside them, dark until she lifted her wrist. The yellow glow of her watch registered instantly, and the mechanism responded without hesitation, unlocking with a clean, mechanical shift before the doors slid open.

She stepped through.

Ethan followed.

“What is this place?” he asked, the question quieter now, pulled from him more by the change in atmosphere than anything else.

“Final Processing,” she said, not looking back at him. “Where the slaughter chambers are.”

The words landed without emphasis, delivered the same way she had said everything else, flat and exact.

“I was on my way to perform an Animal’s final duty,” she continued as she moved deeper inside. “You will witness.”

That made him pause, just for a fraction of a second.

Not long enough to stop.

“Learn what happens,” she added, her tone unchanged, “when curiosity turns into infraction.”

“I’m going to see someone die?” he asked, his voice catching despite himself.

“Yes.”

She didn’t slow. Didn’t soften it. Just answered, and kept walking.

She led him to another door and opened it without hesitation.

The room beyond came into view—and with it, a face he recognised.

“Alice?”

“Ethan?”

The word left him before he could stop it, confusion cutting straight through the fear that had been building in him. For a moment, everything else fell away, replaced by something simpler, something almost normal.

“You know each other?” the Butcher asked, her tone unchanged, but her attention sharpening slightly as it shifted between them.

“Yeah,” Alice said, stepping closer, her expression easy, like this was just another coincidence rather than anything strange. “We go to school together.”

Ethan stared at her, the context of where they were struggling to line up with the familiarity of her standing there.

“Are you being processed, Alice?” he asked, the question coming out before he had time to think it through.

“No,” she said, shaking her head lightly. “I just finished cleaning this chamber.”

The Butcher stepped past them, her attention shifting fully into the room. Her gaze settled near the drain at its centre, taking in the space with a quiet, practiced precision, noting what had been left behind and what had already been cleared.

“Good work, Alice,” she said, and this time there was something faintly different in her tone. Not warmth, exactly, but familiarity. Recognition.

“You may return to Habitation.”

Alice didn’t move.

“Elira, what are you doing?” she asked, her hands settling on her hips, the question coming easily, without hesitation.

Elira’s eyes shifted back to Ethan.

“Your friend was found where he shouldn’t be,” she said, her voice returning to that same flat certainty. “I’m ensuring his curiosity doesn’t get him killed later.”

There was a brief pause.

“Not until he’s ready.”

“Leave,” she said to Alice, the word final, leaving no space for argument.

Alice hesitated only a moment before turning, stepping out of the chamber. She spared Ethan one last look, something unreadable passing across her face before the doors slid shut behind her, sealing them in.

The room settled into silence.

Ethan became aware of it all at once. The sharp scent of cleaning products lingering in the air, strong enough to sting slightly at the back of his throat. The faint, uneven drip of water from the shower in the corner, each drop landing with a soft, hollow echo against the tiles. Alice had cleaned herself there. Cleaned the room. Prepared it.

For what came next.

“On the table, Meatboy,” Elira said.

The words cut through the quiet cleanly, precise and unhurried.

“I’m not an Animal,” he said, the reminder coming out weaker than he intended, clinging to the distinction like it still mattered here.

“You are in this room,” she replied, her gaze steady on him. “Do not make me ask again.”

Ethan moved to the table, the metal bare and uninviting beneath him. As he sat, the cold bit through him immediately, sharp enough to make him shiver before he could stop it.

He didn’t comment on it.

“Lie back. Arms at your side.”

He obeyed without thinking, lowering himself onto the surface, forcing his body into stillness the way he’d seen others do. The position felt deliberate, not just comfortable or convenient, but designed, like there was only one correct way to exist here.

“During Intake, an Animal is often offered a choice,” Elira said, her voice steady as she moved somewhere just out of his direct line of sight. “A final request.”

The words settled over him slowly.

Choice.

His chest tightened, his eyes fixed on the ceiling as the meaning began to take shape, piece by piece, whether he wanted it to or not.

“How would you want to die, Meatboy?”